René Auguste Constantin de Renneville

René Auguste Constantin de Renneville (1650-1723), French writer, was born at Caen.

In consequence of his Protestant principles, he left France for Holland in 1699, and on his return three years later he was denounced as a spy and imprisoned in the Bastille, where he remained until 1713. During his imprisonment he wrote on the margins of a copy of Auteurs déguisés (Paris, 1690) poems which he called Otia bastiliaca. These were rediscovered by Mr James Tregaski in 1906.

Renneville was set at liberty through the intercession of Queen Anne, and made his way to England, where he published his Histoire de la Bastille (5 vols, 1713–24), dedicated to George I. At the time of his death in 1723 he was a major of artillery in the service of the elector of Hesse. His other important work is a Recueil des voyages qui ont servi a l'établissement de la Compagnie des Indes Orientales aux Provinces Unies (10 vols, new ed., Rouen, 1725).

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.